U.S. Artist Wins Japan Based International Manga Competition

[Lobsterdom]

MIMC Official Announcment:
http://e-morning.jp/mimc/result/english.html

Today, upon reading my daily dosage of news, I came across this article,
which included an intriguing interview with the artist, rem.

What is it that Japanese manga has that American comics don't?

"I think the artistic technique really sets the two apart," rem said. "The American method of drawing comic books leaves you wondering what sort of style or feel they're trying to express, as the look seems homogeneous between series to me.

"The method of having a separate person who pencils, inks, colors and edits the comic makes the comic feel less individualistic."

She added, "I feel like you can really see the artist's hand in [Japanese] manga."

"I think that being a manga artist is romantic, and that's one of the reasons it appeals to me so much," she said.

On the contrary, Japanese fans feel that the above mentioned diversity of artists is one the strong appeals of Amecomi(American comics). Interesting! :)
Thoughts?

[Sir Tim Drake]

Only that she shows a complete lack of knowledge of American comics.

[The Xenos]

Yeah. She doesn't know what she's talking about.

HA! She says that American comics are homogenous! What a brainwashed fool. She's so hooked into Japanese comics that's she's downing her own country or fails to see the diversity in it. See, this is the crap that I'm sick of.

Psst. Hey, girlie, Japanese comics have inkers and assistants too. It's not just one guy doing it. There's usually a whole studio, especially for the more famous ones. It's just in Japan, they don't get any big name credit. HA! At least in America the inkers and assistants get name credit in the issue.

I've heard this from numerous manga fans at conventions and even among friends. They argue that US comics are too artificial and assembly line. They think manga, even big stuff like Naruto, are done with total creative freedom and input of one single creator. HA! If they only knew. Too bad they don't actually learn how these things are made, they just read the cover credits on the books at Borders. (Soylent manga is people! People!)

Damn. I wish my friend living in Japan was online so I could send him this. He's laugh at this too. He hears all the crap and editorial problems that happen in manga publishing like I hear stuff off CBR about US comics. He reads manga magazines and follows creators over there. He too can't stand US fans who are totally clueless about how the manga industry actually works.

To me, this is all political bullsh--. It's Japan trying to make its comics seem superior. Believe me, and not to say that all Japanese people are like this, but there is quite a streak of excessive pride, nationalism, and superiority in Japan. Almost to the point of what you could call racism sometimes.

Now we have it bleed over. Even American creators and fans who think that Japanese comics are superior to their own country's and to be good at comics, they have to focus on Japan. I find that really really sad.

You know what? Screw that. We don't need Japan telling us what American comics are good (mainly because they're 'Japanese enough')or what we should call our comics. This whole international manga thing is political bullcrap.

Plus is this the second year or yet another Japanese group giving out awards? I thought the last winner was from Australia and had a book by US publisher Seven Seas.

[The Xenos]

More than 10 years ago, the manga magazine Morning and its sister magazine Afternoon worked with artists from all over the world such as Europe and Asia. At that time, I was starting out as a manga editor, struggling to produce great works with German artists. I had a difficult but good time back in my novice days.
Unfortunately, we didn’t succeed commercially in the international project and we had no other choice but to stop. Similar projects have never happened since. Now, however, we are able to have the world’s first full-scale International Manga Competition as part of a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Morning magazine.

Upon reading and checking another article, that it does seem to be yet another international manga award, independent of the previous one. Here are links to that one.

announced here (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-05-22/international-manga-award)
winner announced here (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/press-release/2007-07-06/seven-seas-artist-wins-international-manga-award)

So.. which one is the real manga award? Who controls the word manga? Is it Japan's Foreign Minister or Kodansha and its Afternoon magazine?


Even though the US has a big publishing market, there aren’t too many manga publishers that have manga editors committed to discovering and developing new talent and editing original work. It is likely that there is a similar situation in Europe as well.

Maybe that's because they're being snobby and not looking at all the indie publishers not labeling their work 'manga'. Gee, from Image to Oni to Dark Horse to many smaller publishers I see crap loads of new talent. Don't ignore a work just because it's not Japanese or not calling itself manga.

Unless I read that wrong and he meant there weren't too many manga editors from Japan scouting American and Europe for talent to be published in Japanese manga magazines.

Even though the work is done by Americans, the original title is Japanese. The literal translation is “Festival of Shadow.”

Wow. That's pretty sad. The American winner literally used a Japanese title for itself. I'm sure that didn't bias the judges. So does a work has to be really really Japanese to win? Does that mean the more Japanese a book is, the better it is as a comic/manga? Wow. Really, why aren't people questioning any of this and just accepting this as something good for young American creators?

When we worked with artists outside Japan ten years ago, we were quite impressed by their great rendering techniques and unique artistic expressions that were quite different from Japanese manga in general. Although the collaboration between these artists and our magazines, Morning and Afternoon, did not necessarily achieve a commercial success, I believe the impact the collaboration had on Japanese artists was larger than it seemed. However, there was always an obstacle to overcome when coordinating with foreign artists to publish them in Japan.
For example, in many cases, the first meeting with these artists began by defining the concept of “manga.” In those days, other than Asian artists, these foreign artists were very talented comic artists, but not necessarily manga artists.

Oh, so one can be a comic artist and not a manga artist. Does that mean manga is superior to comics? What does this mean? Are American comic artists not good enough for this publisher? Am I'm reading too mush into this?, being too sensitive? The only thing I can think of is that he means manga is a bit more grueling pace and editors tougher. Many books are weekly, though some are monthly. Then again, I hear people say that DC or Marvel is tough too. I met an inker at a panel and he said it's nicknamed 'the grind' and not all comic creators can do it. They usually stick to smaller and indie publishing.

Also, Afternoon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afternoon_%28magazine%29) is certainly a familiar title. It's the magazine that has housed some of my favorite mangaka. Tsutomu Nihei's Blame! (see avatar) certainly comes to mind. Looking it up on Wikipedia, I see a number of other creators I like. # Shimoku Kio's Genshiken, Hiroki Endo Eden: It's an Endless World, Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal, Kenichi Sonoda's Gunsmith Cats, Yuki Urushibara's Mushishi, and Minoru Toyoda's Love Roma.

Upon checking his artbook, this was the manga magazine American Creator Paul Pope, another favorite, worked for. I mentioned it in a blog post (http://www.comics2film.com/b/index.php?blog=11&title=of_manga_manifestos_and_other_notes&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1) (at the bottom), Pope had talked about being part of a program where numerous international artists working for Kodansha / Afternoon. This must be the same one the article talks about.

Let's get this straight folks. American comics and Japanese manga are the same damn thing. They have different publishers with different editors with different artists all which make them seem different and create different demans. Yet as a creator, you can do whatever you want. At the end of the day you're all just putting together words and pictures. In the words of Harvey Pekar, "Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures."

[literally exaggerated]

Okay, so she's an American artist winning an international manga award. That is, by definition, a tacit admission that manga is not an issue of nationality, but of style.

And if manga is a style, then how the hell can it be less homogenized than "American comics", which is most definitely NOT a style, but rather a medium (and a misnomer, given the incredibly high percentage of "American comics" that come from Britain and elsewhere in Europe). That is, if being "manga" isn't an issue of where you're from but of how you draw, than manga is by definition confined to works that fall within a rather specific set of styles. But no one would ever claim that works as disparate in style, tone, scope and purpose as Cerebus, Arkham Asylum, Love and Rockets, Jimmy Corrigan, Calvin and Hobbes and All-star Superman are somehow not all of them comics.

[The Xenos]

Wow. Yeah. I didn't even see that blatant contradiction. It seems she's arguing that manga is both a specific art style.. and yet a very diverse art style unless American art which somehow is all somehow a single boring art style. Nice catch there.

And, yeah, I keep joking that all these manga fans should be reading great American works from great American creators like Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Warren Ellis. :rolleyes: Pip, pip. Cheerio!

[Inkthinker]

What I can't figure is how any avid reader of manga could be ignorant of the role of assitants and studio setups in manga creation. While the studio assistants may not get their names on the cover, they're often credited by the Creator in anecdotes, sketches, omake and such. Fullmetal Alchemist, Hellsing and especially Bastard! are all really excellent about including original drawings and stories about the creative team (I espescially admire Hagiwara, who will credit people in the margins of the panels on the page when they make an espescially notable contribution).

It varies amongst artists how much help they get and how much credit they assign, but I'd say that if anything it's American books that are more often the work of a single creator (or, at most, three or four). In fact, the only case of a Western book having a two-man drawing team (a main creator who handles the writing & development and illustrates the characters, and a background man who handles environments, texture and such) that comes immediately to mind is that of Cerebus, with Dave Sim as the front man and Gerhardt as the BG master, and Sim credits Gerhardt very clearly.

I'm sure there's more than just that, but it's a much less common occurence. The main difference, I think, is that it's rarer for the teams who create Western books (espescially mainstream titles for the Big Two) to work closely together in a single studio. And that may in fact make a very big difference... the role of the "editor" in manga production is, I think, much different from that in comics over on this side of the puddle. There ARE artists in Japan who work alone, or with a team of one or two at most (Masamune Shirow is one, I think... so is Miwa Shirou, and though he probably wouldn't be considered a manga artist, Hayao Miyazaki drew his epic Nausicaa on his own. Many doujinshi artists also work alone, or with one or two friends).

But for anyone to attempt homogenize ANY comics, especially now that the Internet makes the country of origin for content relatively irrelevant, is just dumb. I'm glad this girl is being recognized as a skillful creator, but damn... don't embarrass yourself by making ignorant blanket statements.

[The Xenos]

I do stand corrected that it's not a separate award. It's just the second one. At least's that's the impression I get from this article at ANN (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-12-21/second-international-manga-award-competition-begins).

I think you are right that editorial is different in Japan, but at the same time I don't think it's as artist controlled as many fans think. Plus there's the obvious difference that the big two publishers here pretty much own characters and keep using them for decades. Though to insist that Marvel and DC heroes are the only American comics out there is an insult to every other creator working their asses off trying to get their characters recognized.

[Lobsterdom]

I do stand corrected that it's not a separate award. It's just the second one. At least's that's the impression I get from this article at ANN (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-12-21/second-international-manga-award-competition-begins).

No, they're different awards. :)
The International Manga Award which you mentioned is organized by the Japanese foreign ministry.
First place went to Lee Chi Ching, a Chinese artist. You can take a look at his work here (http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/culture/manga/index.html) along with work from the other winners(you'll have to scroll down the page half way).
I didn't mention this award because the announcement by Abe was so annoying(a depressing number of Japanese politicians just totally reek of %$&#....but thats another issue).
As for the M.I.M.C., it officially states that "Professional artists are also welcome to this competition. Besides manga, we accept all types of comics, including superhero comics, cartoons, and bandes dessine´es and so on." Seemed more unbiased and reliable since its organized by a comic publisher, but after reading the comments on this thread this also starts to sound a tad narrow minded...